BY JEFF SCOGGINS

This is the complete interview with Leland Kaiser of Kaiser & Associates, of Brighton, Colorado, on which the article "Success Is Out of Control" is based.

Jeff Scoggins: You are a futurist. What is a futurist and what do you do? 
Leland Kaiser: I'm a healthcare consultant with Kaiser & Associates, a 
healthcare consulting firm. I m involved in everything from board development to medical staff education to strategic planning. Because I m a futurist I spend a lot of time helping organizations anticipate their futures and in many cases inventing them. So a futurist is, by definition, someone who believes that the future is something that can be invented, or something that can be prevented; that indeed we have the ability to design futures and step into them. So it s a rather proactive kind of stance.

JS: In your consulting, what are the typical topics you discuss with your clients? 
LK: For instance, let s take an example at Memorial Herman Hospital in 
Houston, Texas. I m consulting with them on developing an institute of spiritual leadership. This in an on-going program to teach core spiritual values to healthcare managers. With the assumption that hospitals aren't really business organizations, we may say they are actually spiritual organizations. Spirituality is good business and good business is spiritual. And we should always attempt to put the two together.

JS: Is this something you bring up?
LK: The relationship I have with my clients is that of conversation. And, as we converse, I point out to them possibilities and areas that they may wish to investigate. It s a process called dialog and then, with the dialog, issues and possibilities emerge.

JS: I understand you promote a concept of corporate tithing.
LK: Right. What I'm really suggesting is that a healthcare organization 
should set aside 10 percent of their profits at the end of the year, forward fund that into the next year and use that money in the community to develop healthcare programs for people that are under served. Typically, these people will be individuals who can't afford medical care. So this is a range of creative programs-maybe with schools, with churches, with the police department-and not to be confused with community benefit (bad debt, charity care, medical education). At the end of the year is you say, "OK, we've come to the end of our fiscal period. What was the profit that we achieved this year? What s 10 percent of it? Cut a check into the community foundation." That s it, the money s gone. It can be used by a community board to meet unmet needs in the community.

JS: The hospital has zero control over that money?
LK: Zero control. They re permitted to have members on the committee board, and they should have. But the fact is the board is an autonomous body and it simply considers the community needs and meets those needs. All the hospitals I work with on a continuing basis tithe themselves or I don't work with them, And the reason is very simple. I think any hospital that s not tithing to its community is behaving inappropriately.

JS: When you bring forward this tithing concept to a hospital, what s the normal reaction?
LK: There are dozen of hospitals in the country doing it and usually it s, "We've never thought of that before. That s a neat idea. How do we do it?" And what I generally do is refer them to hospitals that are already tithing. A good example would be Memorial Health System in South Bend, Indiana where Phil Newbold is the CEO. A number of years ago I worked with his board, and we established a tithing policy. He s thought the whole thing out and developed the funding criteria for the projects they support. He sends a free kit to anybody that I refer to him. And I have never had it turned down by any board to whom I've presented this plan. That has nothing to do with me, it s just that the idea has tremendous value, tremendous merit. And when people examine it they suddenly understand that this is a business investment; this is a way of preserving our not-for-profit status; this is a way of overcoming some of the evils of capitalism that we re caught in. When they cut their million or million and a half dollar check (sometimes up to three million) they do it with great enthusiasm.

JS: What about Adventist healthcare?
LK: When you say tithing to an Adventist hospital they think you mean support the ministry. And they resent the intrusion of the General Conference into the way they run their business. I'd say on the other hand, however, there are many hospitals that are very active in community outreach programs. And one could conceive of some of those activities as being a tithe. There are a number of our institutions that really do some very good work in the community, but it s a tithing concept that tends not to be accepted by our hospitals.

JS: So when you clarify that the money goes back to the community, does the concept then get the same kind of reaction other hospitals give or is there still some resistance?
LK: I think there s a little bit of resistance, which is sort of an irony, 
isn't it? Non-religious hospitals get it a lot faster than religious 
hospitals do.

JS: Any idea why that might be?
LK: No, I don't really know. My guess is, number one, they tend to confuse it with the old idea of money going to the church. I think, number two, they don't want the church involved directly in their business operations. They sort of put those two things together. I think the third factor is that they've adopted essentially the same philosophy of the marketplace that every other hospital has--that we re in the business to make money.

JS: And yet the secular or for-profit hospitals don't feel that way?
LK: Well, again I say we haven't articulated that position very well in our own institutions. And it s a problem we need to solve at some point. We re not known as being hospitals that are heavily involved in community outreach.

JS: Many healthcare people will see this interview. Would you have anything to say to them specifically?
LK: Many of our individual institutions have really done a great deal of 
excellent community service. And so I want to be very careful how I talk about them. Glendale Adventist has a big outreach program. Here in Denver, Centura is supporting parish nursing. I want to be clear that it s not that they re not involved in their community. It s that they ve never really incorporated, as a board policy, tithing. And so it s not a systematic kind of budgeted item that s put in automatically with no other thought being given to it. It tends to be rather opportunistic. Therefore, it depends on the particular CEO, the particular hospital, or project that comes along.

JS: How did you get started with this idea of tithing?
LK: I've been in the Healthier Communities movement for about 10 years. And so my primary commitment is that the hospital is not primarily a business, it s primarily a community resource; that it has a sacred covenant with the community to take care of the community (religious hospital or not). Now the fact is the people that pay should pay, but there are people who can't pay. So we re still responsible for them. And the question becomes, "How do we take care of them, if we re responsible for them and they can't pay?" My answer s very simple-subsidize yourself. So, what tithing represents really is a self-subsidy that enables you to take those monies and go out into the community and meet those needs. Now, if you don't do that, either they re not met or you say to government, "Why don t you increase our taxes and why don't you do it?" My viewpoint is this: the less government is involved in this whole thing the better. I have a very simple idea and that is every community already has all the resources it needs to take care of it s people. It s not a resource problem, and never has been a resource problem. It s a mental model problem; it s a thinking problem. And if we were to get close to the community and really use our resources appropriately, we d have all the resources we need, all the people we need, all the buildings we need, and all the equipment we need to take care of every single person in the community.

To give you a case in point, the volunteers of one hospital provide free care to 10,000 people who have no insurance. It s staffed by retired physicians who come in as volunteers and work several days a week. Now that is a major philanthropic activity that assures that thousands and thousands of people have access to care. It is not a government program; it is not a for-profit program; it s a community program. So when I look at the big three (what I call the community trinity), sector one is government, sector two is the for-profit marketplace, and sector three is the community. Now the fact is those three have to be involved together in a collaborative relationship to meet the total needs. There are some things the government should be doing, such as Medicare and Medicaid. There are things the private market should be doing, because people who have money should use their money to buy healthcare. But when those two together have done everything they can do, there s still a big void. The big void can't be solved by the private sector, since people who don't have money can't buy healthcare. And it can't really be solved by the government sector because no one s going to let us increase taxes that much. At least they better not.

So it comes to what I call the community or the voluntary or the civic sector. You d call it philanthropy. Now if the government, the for-profit market place, and the volunteer sector are in a balanced relationship--an equilateral triangle--what we would discover is that we have everything we need to meet our total obligation to the community. But the fact is they're not in this kind of relationship. They don't even talk to each other. So if you were to say, "ls there one community where government, the for-profit marketplace, and the voluntary sector come together to plan jointly for the community?" the answer is no.

Therefore, what I'm really saying to a community hospital is: you re the best people to do this because you re really a community facility. And you have access to the leadership structure of the community so yo' re well-plugged in, you re in business so you can throw off some profit, therefore, what you can do is provide a good example. By using some of your money in the community, then you can match that with foundation money, people s contributions, people s voluntary efforts, and you become sort of a gateway to make this equilateral triangle work. And that s exactly what happens by the way. Every community I'm working in where there is tithing, there is all kinds of support in cooperative contributions coming from other agencies in the community. So you re not just a bank giving away money.

JS: Do you get a lot of feedback from those that have put this policy in place?
LK: Oh yes. In fact, Dan Wilford, who s the CEO of Memorial Herman, in Houston, Texas, says, "You know, Lee, everybody loves me. When I walk down the sidewalk people know me. They know the programs we're running. They come and say 'Thank you for what you re doing with the boy scouts. Thank you for what you re doing in our neighborhood center. I mean it changes the whole image of the hospital." The fact is, if they took their whole advertising and 
public relations budget and put it into tithe, they d be a lot further ahead. The returns are better as far as marketing and public relations when you don t think of it that way and don t call it that, and just tithe your hospital and help your community. That s what creates image because it s reality.

JS: Do you see connections between all this and what God intended when He offered the whole giving concept?
LK: I think so. There s a whole new kind of capitalism I'm interested in 
developing called compassionate capitalism." When Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand, he assumed a moral framework that no longer exists. He didn't have to talk about it because everybody understood it. What we've done is lost the moral framework. So capitalism is driven by short-term return and greed. That s a poison pill, by the way. That can destroy capitalism. Compassionate capitalism says that what we should do is create a spiritual economics based on a very simple notion. We share our abundance. I teach in a graduate school of business. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a businessman, I'm a capitalist. I believe in democracy. I believe in money.

What I'm saying is, that s fine, as long as you re willing to share some of that money with others. That what we want to do is take the money we share to move people from the debit side of the social ledger to the credit side of the social ledger. In other words, I want to move them from drug rehabilitation programs and welfare and jail and all of that to being tax payers and being voting members of our community. Because the fact is, capitalism cannot endure unless there are buyers of products.

The way you kill capitalism is that you have so much social morbidity that you create high tax structures, which prices you out of the market. Secondly, you start getting increased inventories because you don't have buyers. So, if you really believe in capitalism, which I do by the way, then I think what you need to do is say "How do we preserve capitalism?" And the answer is, "You make it compassionate." And you say, "We re going to share some of our abundance, one-tenth." By the way, if every business in every community tithed themselves 10 percent, they could essentially solve almost all of their problems--without any federal help at all.

The problem we have is-they don't. Example: Grand Bank, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, tithes itself. This is a bank! Ten percent of the pre-tax earnings go to the community. Pre-tax. Ten percent. Now imagine if all the banks in this country did that. So what I'm saying is, if you want to preserve the capitalist system, it'll cost you 10 percent of your profit. Now, if you re so unwise as to not do that, what happens is you re going to pay a lot more than 10 percent, because an unmet need in the community creates a political issue. A politician comes in, jumps on a white horse, rides into Washington, and whack, legislation comes down on your head.

Isn't it fascinating what God said--you've heard of the year of jubilee? 
What God said is "Take care of those folks out there. I'll cause you to rise as a great example to other people." In other words, God believes in wealth, not poverty. So what I'd say to Adventist hospitals is, if you want to have a good bottom line every year, then you have a top line. The top line produces the bottom line. Every hospital I have worked with I have said to them, "I will assure you that if you tithe yourself, you ll have a better bottom line every year." I know of no exception to that. It s absolutely fascinating that all the hospitals that are not tithing themselves are having all the trouble.

JS: What are your thoughts on personal tithe for Adventists and how it's distributed through the General Conference? Does it work the same way?
LK: I think it does. And if you're a citizen of a community you really are faced with tithing in two senses. One sense is, "What do I give to the church to support it?" The second is really your tithing to the community-what do you give to the community? So, to what degree are you either spending your time or some of your money on community projects? And my belief is that we really have to support the church and we also have to support the community. The Adventist churches are not built as being interested in their communities and being involved in their communities. If I go to a mayor or a state representative, and say, "Who in the community is really helping you? Who's really out there trying to grapple with issues-with poverty and ignorance and crime and disease?," You'll never hear them say, "The Adventist church." If there's any church that's mentioned, it'll be the Catholic church.

JS: Can the local Adventist church say, "We could do that if we had more of our money here, but we have to send it through the system to come back to us."
LK: I think a whole new discussion needs to take place--how do we support local ministry, and how should we divide this tithing money and where should it go? I don't have any answers for that. I think the issue has to be re-examined from time to time. If we really believe that the work of the church is for both this world and the world to come, and if we believe the work of the church is not only the paid ministry but also many community outreach activities, then we already have to ask, "What is the best way of financing those?" And you see what's happening, unfortunately, is because a lot of the younger folks in our churches are not involved in community projects and because they're not very turned on or excited about what the church is doing, they're not paying their tithe.

The reason is, I believe, that the whole allure of foreign mission is gone. And so what we have to do now, as many of the protestant churches are doing, is work in the community. Those churches who do this are growing by leaps and bounds. They're bringing people together and saying, "How do we go out there and help our community become a better place to live?" And, because the people's heart is in that community work, their money follows. So, if we continue the way we're going, we're going to have a bunch of older people with reduced incomes trying to support a denomination that has less and less money to work on.

JS: There's a trend of giving more to projects than to a system like the church. And that trend is everywhere, not just the Adventist church. What's your opinion on that?
LK: I don't think people are going to fund anything their heart's not in. So as soon as you take away their personal participation and their personal understanding of the need for this project, the money's not there. When the Honduras report came into our church as "those folk out there really need help," we raised $1,000 in about the time it would take you to draw in a breath. What's the chance of the general offering getting that kind of money?

JS: What is your philosophy of philanthropy?
LK: My philosophy of philanthropy is that we live in a connected universe. Therefore, if anyone is suffering, I'm suffering. I can't really separate my good from their good. The Bible says that we're all branches on the same vine. So if there's a branch that's suffering, I'm on the same vine and then I have an obligation to them. It's sort of like, when I meet you, I meet myself in a different form. If we're God's children then we have to feel responsibility for each other. Philanthropy is simply a way of sharing with others parts of myself.

One of the mottoes I often give to a community is, "You are the problem. You are the solution. And you are the resource." Once they understand that, they're empowered to act. In other words, you don't have to ask for permission. The problem exists because of the way you think. Change the way you think and you're the answer to the problem. Use some of your own resources to solve it and you solve it.

Leland R. Kaiser is founder and president of Kaiser & Associates of Brighton, Colorado. Jeff Scoggins is communication projects manager for the Office of Global Mission at the Seventh-day Adventist world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Christian Financial Web sites
Christian Financial Concepts
Crosswalk.Com--Money